The Bitcoin Cash () chain has officially upgraded, adding Schnorr
signatures and the Segwit recovery exemption. As of block
582680, the chain has implemented the new features successfully
and fans are celebrating another major protocol
improvement.

Also read:

Another Bitcoin Cash Upgrade Achieved

On Wednesday, May 15, the Bitcoin Cash network has completed
yet another successful upgrade by implementing two new features
— Segwit recovery and Schnorr signatures. Essentially, the
addition makes it possible for network
participants to recover funds that have been sent to Segwit
addresses by accident. The implementation makes an exemption
following the enforcement of the new CLEANSTACK rule that made
Segwit recovery previously impossible after the upgrade last
November. But the high profile feature everyone’s been chatting
about is the implementation of , a digital signature scheme that allows
for complex signing abilities.

The signature scheme was invented by and cryptocurrency developers have been looking
into adding the scheme for years but it was patented. Now that
the patent has expired, Bitcoin Cash () developers ran with the idea and decided to
add the preliminary basics of Schnorr signatures to the main
chain. In conversation last week, developer Mark Lundeburg told
news.Bitcoin.com that the basics of Schnorr signatures can
slash roughly 4% off current transaction storage. In the
future, after another Schnorr related upgrade, the scheme could
provide for public signature aggregation and more complex
.

Bitcoin Cash Using Schnorr Will Aid Privacy & Scaling

Further Schnorr can provide multiple parties with the
ability to transact with simple multi-party aggregation
schemes. Because Schnorr signatures are only 64 bytes in
contrast to the traditional 70 bytes used by ECDSA signatures,
initially people can take advantage of the 4% savings in regard
to blockchain storage and bandwidth. But with further upgrades
and the implementation of public signature aggregation, the
entire network’s scaling abilities could be enhanced by
reducing blockchain storage and bandwidth by at least 20-25%.
When Schnorr is combined with concepts like
pay-to-public-key-hash ()
addresses and the recently added opcode , other benefits can be added to transactions
like privacy and decision-based smart contracts.

As of today, after the initial implementation developers will be able to build:

After the upgrade, the Bitcoin Cash community and developers
celebrated the achievement and programmers like Gabriel Cardona
and Mark Lundeberg
the first Schnorr signature transactions on the main network.
As of 12:10 p.m. EST there’s been 23 blocks processed under the
new consensus rules. A few hours earlier, however, it seems an
unknown entity attempted to exploit the chain with invalid
transactions, which affected numerous Bitcoin ABC clients. A
was then added to fix the
issue within the client after being submitted by Amaury Séchet
and reviewed by ABC developer Jason Cox. Developers have said
that the exploit had absolutely nothing to do with the
consensus upgrade itself and mining pools were notified of the
mining bug immediately. While waiting for the patch, pools
mined a succession of empty blocks up until block height 582697
and the chain began processing blocks normally.

The community is thrilled to see yet another successful upgrade
and is pleased the added features will enhance the path toward
providing the best peer-to-peer electronic cash system on the
planet.

If you want to learn more about Schnorr signatures, check out
the explainers below from two prominent developers:

What do you think about the Bitcoin Cash network
implementing Schnorr signatures following another successful
upgrade? Let us know what you think about this subject in the
comments section below.

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Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in
Florida. Redman has been an active member of the
cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for
Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications.
Redman has written thousands of articles for
news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging
today.

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